Today I had the great honour to train with one of the true legends of our time. Following a very early start I met up with the fitness legend George Daldry at 5.30am in front of the North Bondi Surf Club.
I had first heard of George Daldry as a kid through my Dad who had relayed stories of the many torturous training sessions. He was the man who made the Australian Rugby League team into World Champions and trained the Eastern Suburbs Roosters and Manly Warringah Sea Eagles during the 1970's and 1980's. Little did I realize at the time but George also helped a number of other world-class athletes.
His personal story was motivation in itself - how he’d overcome the horrors of Japanese Prisoner of War camps for instance. How he was laughed at when he was one of the first people to ever jog in public. I decided that George might be able to help me out too!
One night in Changi Prison (the notorious WWII Japanese POW camp), George Daldry decided that if he survived, he would go searching for the fountain of youth. Well, he not only found it, but in the process he became (and still is!) the fittest and strongest person, kilo for kilo, for his age, in the country.
George Daldry, at 84 years of age is still taking up to 10 training classes per week! Not only survived the absolute despair of Changi Prison, but how he went on to become recognized by the International Olympic Committee as one of it’s ‘Trainers of the Century’.
Over the years George has helped many thousands of people (including the former US President, George Bush Sr., Prince Albert of Monaco and Kerry Packer, as well as many of this country’s greatest sporting champions) to reach their fitness goals. In the meantime he has tried and tested every conceivable method of achieving maximum health.
The session was tough especially seeing I was still in the process of recovering from the beach sprints with the Sydney Roosters earlier in the week. This sure was a great experience and one to treasure for the future challenges ahead ...
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